Quinn Salisbury, 5, left, and Siobhan Gillis, 6, make their way through an obstacle course while taking part in a Red Bull Crashed Ice family event in Edmonton's Rundle Park on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018. David Bloom / Postmedia

Young Edmontonians got a chance to test their skills against ice cross downhill athletes Saturday, but the obstacle course set up at Rundle Park was a far cry from the hazards athletes will face at the Red Bull Crashed Ice World Championship.

“It’s nerve-racking standing at the top, and looking down at whatever drop there is at the start is always intimidating. But once you just jump off of that, you just try to go fast and stay on your feet,” Oli Isaac, 21, said between helping kids avoid obstacles.

“When you are starting at the gate and taking strides into it, you can’t even see the landing,” he said. “You are going in blind and you just have to trust that it’ll be there.”

A total of 64 men and 16 women will launch themselves down an ice-covered, steep-sloping track, braving sharp turns and long jumps for a chance to take the podium at Red Bull Crashed Ice Ice Cross Downhill World Championship in Edmonton on March 9 and 10.

It will be the first time Isaac, from Sherwood Park, will compete as an adult. He raced in the junior division in 2017, finishing ninth in the world.

Since then, he has been training at the B-Line Indoor Bike Park in Calgary on rollerblades to prepare for the challenges he will face on the track.

“There’s the big air jump. That’s going to be a challenge,” Isaac said. “They’re really scary because you really just have to send it.”

The last event in Edmonton in 2015 attracted 70,000 spectators, setting a record for the largest crowd at a single-day sporting event in downtown Edmonton.

“They really need to skate to the very last metre if they want a chance to advance,” he said.

Papillon promised the track would be wider and faster, giving athletes more opportunity to jockey for better positions as they fight to determine “the best skaters in the world.”

“There is no other discipline that brings that speed, that roughness, that control, that endurance,” he said.

Big names to watch include Canadian Jacqueline Legere, fighting for her third championship title. And Canadian Scott Croxall will be looking to take back the title from U.S. competitor Cameron Naasz, who won back-to-back championships in 2016 and 2017 after Croxall topped the podium in 2015.

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